Hearthstone Merloc Rank 1 Warlock Deck By: Cloak

So the decklist is pretty straightforward Merlocks for the most part, but adopts a philosophy of attrition. What I mean by that is the deck runs zero “big” spells/finishers and is actually focused heavily on buffing the toughness on each of your minions and having as many early drops with 2 toughness as possible. I built this deck in response to a heavy Priest/Mage/Druid sweepers meta and it worked out. In fact, last night I was rank 5 and couldn’t seem to gain any traction, and literally won 23 games in a row to make the top of rank 1 lol:

Deck – War-Mur Beef Stew (puns, yussss!)

Health buffers:

2) Blood Imp 2) Young Priestess 2) Coldlight Seer 2) Murloc Warleader

Typical Murlocks:

2) Grimscale Oracle 2) Murloc Raider 2) Murloc Tidecaller 2) Murloc Tidehunter 2) Bluegill Warrior 1) Old Murk-Eye <—-had no idea he existed until last night when someone smashed me with him. Immediately crafted one and made room for him and he has overperformed. He’s Murloc’s version of Agent Commander

Critical Warlock creatures:

2) of the 1/3 taunt 2) of the 3/2 Imp In addition to the Blood Imps but I listed those above

Critical Neutral Creatures:

2) Leper Gnome – Gives reach. I play these guys to lull the opponent into miscalculating their actual life total. If you can afford to keep these in your hand by playing other stuff, do it.

2) Abusive Sergeant – Almost better than Leper Gnome in all aspects except late game topdecking. 2 Surprise damage anywhere can literally take over a board. This guy is critical in Warlock on Warlock match ups because it throws off their math and gives you board control super early.

2) Knife Juggler – Well, duh.

Spells:

1) Soulfire – I only have one in the deck. I used to have two, but every one in five or six games I’d get two in my hand and that’s an absolute waste (remember you’re trying to save these spells for finishers and surprise attacks to throw off the math, so sandbagging them until late game is usually the best application of them unless something needs to die immediately). So I had two in the deck and was really looking for something to replace one but wasn’t sure what that could be, then some other murlock deck surprise-finished me with Murk-Eye and I knew what I needed to replace one with.

I think that’s the whole decklist. The object of the deck isn’t just “smash smash smash”, it’s to establish board control through high toughness. Many, many times My murlocs have just powered through two Blizzards because I had double Coldlight Seer or one Coldlight Seer and two Blood Imps.

Omissions:

Murloc that draws everyone 2 cards: Symmetrical cards are just bad. This guy doesn’t help your board position at all, and costs 3 mana which is really high in your curve. On turn three you want to be locking in your board position with lifegain Murlocks (Warlord or Coldseer), not potentially giving your opponents outs and only getting a 2/2 for it.

Demonfire or Mortal Coil: Too narrow of an application to justify taking up slots. Between the health-boosting minions, and the surprise reach minions (Leper and Sergeant), the utility provided by those cards is far better than small damage or buffs. Plus, the utility on the other guys are attached to bodies which is critical.

Hope that helps, if you have any matchup specific questions I’m more than happy to answer them. For the most part against mages you want to bait them into using their coin early by dropping a first turn 2/1 of any flavor. Once you do that you know you have four whole turns to set up creatures with 3 toughness and it’s pretty easy to do. Against Druids you absolutely need either Blood Imp or Voidwalker so mulligan till you see either, and against other creature decks your sole priority is setting up dominance through Knifejuggler.

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Also, if you want to know what the top ranks look like, Rank 5 up to Rank 1 was about mainly Druid Taunt and Sweep control / Mage, then Rogue Control / Warlock (mix of rush and control), then only a very rare priest or warrior or pally deck. I saw absolutely zero Shaman decks past about rank 6 or 7 which is good because they beat the tar out of this deck.

If War-Mur Beef Stew gets a little more play and you want to beat it, look to Shaman, and Stormforged Axe and that damn lightning spell and I’ll hate you forever